Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday December 14, 2013 @07:16PM
from the inside-scoop dept.

jones_supa writes "SteamOS has been further inspected to see what kind of technical solutions it uses. The Debian-based OS uses Linux 3.10, shipping with a heap of patches applied, with the most focus being on real-time-like features. The kernel is also using aufs and they seem to be sitting on some bug fixes for upstream on top of that. The kernel is not using the new Intel P-State driver, with the reported reason being, 'it causes issues with sound being choppy during BigPicture trailer video playback.' SteamOS is using SysVinit as its init system. The desktop is backed by X.Org server 1.12.4 and a custom desktop compositor which seems to be a 4,200-line patch on xcompmgr. Catalyst and Mesa components can be found on the system, but so far only NVIDIA is officially supported. The system boots into Big Picture Mode, but the user can drop into a GNOME desktop. Responsible for a great deal of the kernel changes, SteamOS compositor work, and other SteamOS code is Pierre-Loup A. Griffais, a.k.a. 'Plagman'. He was a NVIDIA employee dealing with their Linux support. Another Valve employee doing lots of the SteamOS system-level work is John Vert, who up until last year was a Microsoft employee since 1991. There's also other former Microsoft employees on Valve's Linux team, like Mike Sartain."

Debian is a rock-solid foundation, that is just missing drivers. As to the custom-kernel, I have been doing that with Debian for over 10 years with no problems at all, except for some very recent issue with kernel include paths. (Which can be fixed by just using older kernel headers.)

Valve has already commented that they will be porting all of their engines over to Linux, so I doubt that it'd be long before Portal 2 is offered as a native game in Linux rather than having to play through the streaming service.

true, but it also means they will have to code against those cross-platform engines. So no using the.net based ones (which tend to be a bit rubbish anyway, permanent 100% cpu on all the games I've played that used them).

I'm sure Valve considers this drive towards using their engine to be a good knock-on bonus!

"Over 300" isn't an impressive amount. The Windows Steam client has "over 9000" games (well, items which can be DLC, expansions, etc).

For that matter quantity is never the issue, quality is. Right now Steam for Linux lacks in the big name games. It has a few, and some popular indies like Starbound, but you find that you miss out on the majority of new games, particularly AAA games for it.

How many of those 9,000 windows steam games run on the consoles? (BTW it's closer to 3,000 - 3,500 unique windows games - excluding DLC).

Somebody that already has a gaming PC (presumably with Steam) isn't the target demographic of this push. Folks who want console level convenience but would be open to saving money buying on Steam are. And what will they see when Steam Machines launch early next year?

PS4 169 Total Games released and announcedXBONE 77 Total Games released and announcedSteam Machine 300+ games already released (and purchasable) *and* more coming soon.

Then look at the other features you'll get with a Steam Machine (and Steam):

* Steam Sales

* Steam gifting (give your grandkids a Steam Machine then send them games through steam from your home PC/Tablet/Phone, etc)

* Access to player mods (Steam Workshop)

* Free online play (MMO's w/ monthly fees not included)

* Equal or better hardware depending on your budget

* Upgradeable hardware

* Made with COTS HW -> easily fixable

* Games you purchased on your Steam Machine are tied to your account, *not* your machine. On the road? Open your laptop and pick up on your games where you left off.

* Ability to play 3rd party/unlicensed titles without jailbreaking

* Compatibility with PC hardware (that works with Linux). Mouse and KB anyone?

How many of those 9,000 windows steam games run on the consoles? (BTW it's closer to 3,000 - 3,500 unique windows games - excluding DLC).
Somebody that already has a gaming PC (presumably with Steam) isn't the target demographic of this push. Folks who want console level convenience but would be open to saving money buying on Steam are. And what will they see when Steam Machines launch early next year?
PS4 169 Total Games released and announced
XBONE 77 Total Games released and announced
Steam Machine 300+ games already released (and purchasable) *and* more coming soon.

Technically you are correct when you point out the number of games. But I don't think that doesn't really mean a lot. The PS Vita has over 1300 games available for it on the PSN and look how great its doing. I'd rather buy a platform that has one game I want than a platform with thousands that I don't.

Have a handful of system sellers is more important than having 100s of games no one cares about. Those 300 games? Mostly old Valve first party and indies that are available everywhere. A good chunk of hot PC games(Blizzard games, LoL, Minecraft, Origin) are not even on Steam, and even if those games were on Linux I find it hard to imagine the average joe sideloading the apps (basically the Android/Google Play situation).

I think the extra competition by the Steam Machines are a great opportunity for traditional console makers to review some of their outdated practices and offer more interesting products. Currently the only reason I buy consoles alongside my gaming PC are for the exclusives games(and the lack of which is also the reason I'm not interested on Steam OS). And because of that I wish them good but yeah, they will have to do something about that library. As for the other features, while interesting, they're secondary. Game consoles are for games. Steam machines are just open gaming consoles.

Not to mention, as an indiegame dev who cares more about the game than the money and creates cross platform code using GNU/Linux, I might just say screw purchasing iHardware and lose the additional time sink of build/test on Win. There's a few other developers I know of similar mindedness, so if the audience isn't non-existant you may see Linux exclusive games too. In my instance I'd just concentrate on the Linux build to get it out the door (as I always do), but put the testing on other platforms off until interest/demand warrants it.

Since I started with an OS abstraction layer and use the GNU toolchain everywhere, there's no such thing as porting between platforms -- setting up cross compiling is a one shot deal; However, there's nothing like testing on the metal. Porting changes even without the cross compiler suite is just "git pull && make" on any platform GCC runs on; I could use LLVM, but the point is that I'm not compiling with multiple different compilers with their own quirks to work around; FLOSS means vendor lock-in isn't a concern there. It's a shame that Apple makes it illegal for me to install their OS on my superior yet cheaper hardware. I can't justify buying separate lower spec systems just for OSX gamedev given their market share, and even setting up the cross compiling from Linux is a bit questionable, so while it's doable I avoid it. Linux and Windows allow installation on whatever they'll run on, even VMs in most cases.

Now that consoles are basically just neutered PCs where the functionality is sold back to you at a premium: Fees for multiplayer & P2P chat? Charging for publishing i.e. making their platform valuable? While ads are on the dash, wtf? And considering that heterogeneous computing is coming to desktops, mobiles, etc. I think this last console generation was it for me. Upgradeable game system? Yeah, it's just a full featured personal computer. FINALY! One thing I don't hear many folks talk about is the huge potential for tons of actual user generated content with SteamOS (PC) games in contrast with consoles; Not just gloating over social media screenshots and vids of in-game footage... You really need a desktop interface to get down and dirty with some wicked modding;

As a modder from way back, all of my game dev efforts are mod centric. I have mods I made for games decades ago that still play great today. If we want gaming to be realized as the full expressive medium it can be, we need to stop the practice popular in the last decade of birthing games and giving them DRM death sentences. I'm less concerned about this aspect on SteamOS than a console. EG: My Xbox 360 can see my friend's console. We'll be connected and chatting with each other. The consoles both know we have the original Halo 2 in the tray, and all the game needs is to be given the IP of the other client to play online -- And yet you can't do this on XBL, they turned off the Halo2 server; You have to purchase a newly released version of the game. That's asinine. Fire up a VPN w/ system link (or XLink Kai), BLAM, online multiplayer without XBL. What the fuck, MS. Might as well not be paying for your planned obsolescence non-service.

One day the Halo 3 server will be cut off, and all of the Halo Tracks [halotracks.org] we modders spent lots of time building and playing for that game will be unplayable online. Without emulators, our hardware will crap out too. This kills the game. Game devs and players benefit most if games can run everywhere forever, but most console makers are directly opposed to the game industry's benefit: They benefit if games can only be played in one place for a limited period of time. I really hope SteamOS takes off and breaks the cycle of needless game death. Art should not have needless death sentences applied.

I agree, completely, but also should point out that most art is crap. I've not modded anything much since I made DOOM levels, and I would find it hilarious if anyone still actually had any copies of the levels I created. If I remember correctly, I only made 3 "fit to release" (IMO) levels I uploaded, after having played them for hours on end with my friends. I just made them for me and my friends, and shared if anyone wanted them.

I used to build myself patchsets roughly equal in size to the kernels themselves. There are a LOT of rare but bbv valuable projects out there.

Steam has opted for well-established APIs, which is reasonable. Not what I would have done, as in a console war, you want to be able to undercut your opponents fatally if need be. However, consoles without games sell about as well as JCB GTs. Probably less. So, from that perspective, Steam (with a few hundred titles) would have wanted to have the games make use of the

The nVidia proprietary Linux GPU drivers are substantially better than the AMD proprietary Linux GPU drivers. So while Valve can buy any GPU they want, getting an AMD GPU to perform with Linux as well as it would with Windows is probably difficult.

How many downstream projects get screwed when one of the kernel devs decides to ignore AUFS and "accidentally" breaking it? There are no more excuses. Union mount/overlay is fucking vapourware... the farce has gone on long enough, mainline AUFS already.

I use it to backup to 5 disks (of various sizes).Need to backup 10TB to a bunch of disks, but in the case of a disaster I want to be able to read individual disks without setting up a (software) raid array when restoring from an emergency. So I joined 5 disks of various sizes, 10TB in total, together with aufs and write to the aufs device. Aufs ensures that files are written on one of the disks, the one with the most space left.

Later I can take an individual disk and find part of all files on int, or put them together in an aufs-setup and restore in one go.

Raid-JBOD has the drawback that loss of one disk (in the backup set) means loss of all of them.Raid-5 is more complicated and fragile for restores, and wastes 1 disk for parity, which is not required for a backup (the live system already is raid-6).

Interesting that Intel's frequency scaling causes audio pops so they disabled the p state drivers at the kernel level. As such this release might work well as a DAW if one were use Ardour or ecasound with jack. I am thinking about setting it up for this purpose and seeing what kind of RT performance it will achieve. Ubuntu Studio is interesting but far to convoluted and difficult to modify to ones liking. Seeing that this system is using sysvinit, coding called functions will be much easier to script and run. It would be really great if it can be tweaked to do high bit rate audio recording and broadcast in realtime streams over networks. Nice to see they are paying close attention to audio problems caused by the system at the kernel level, this release could become much more than just a gaming platform.

. As such this release might work well as a DAW if one were use Ardour or ecasound with jack. I am thinking about setting it up for this purpose and seeing what kind of RT performance it will achieve. Ubuntu Studio is interesting but far to convoluted and difficult to modify to ones liking. Seeing that this system is using sysvinit, coding called functions will be much easier to script and run. It would be really great if it can be tweaked to do high bit rate audio recording and broadcast in realtime streams over networks. Nice to see they are paying close attention to audio problems caused by the system at the kernel level, this release could become much more than just a gaming platform.

Buddy, that is very smart. I've written here on several occasions about my annual efforts to use Linux as a main production machine in my DAW setup. I've been using it for streaming samples and rendering and off-loading effects and other processing (via Cockos' Reaper) but it never was ready for prime-time. UbuntuStudio and Debian and others, and there were always problems.

I think it's interesting that today I noticed that Valve has started selling a DAW program called "Ohm Studio" through Steam. Wouldn't it be great if there was some connection to SteamOS? I'd love for it to become a solid platform for music production. Plus, when I get tired after my 30th take, I can unwind with a little Dota2.

I'm glad you posted this, because I'm not really enough of a Linux maven to have made the connection/

There no connection to SteamOS with Ohm Studio. It is, as with most pro audio stuff, Windows and Mac only. It is just on Steam because Valve is now selling regular software, as well as games, on Steam. Cakewalk started selling Music Creator, their home version of their Sonar software, on Steam a couple months ago.

I've been doing it once every couple years for at least the last ten years. Every single time, I end up annoyed and switch back to OS X and Windows. I don't have an infinite amount of time to spend getting my OS to work, and I have no desire to make a hobby out of OS configuration; I'd rather just install it, and have it get the hell out of the way.

Mind you, in the server space Windows Server just pisses me right off and I'm far more comfortable with Linuxes.

To my way of thinking it is entirely possible to create a really great audio server that will respond as well as linux does as an internet server. My particular interest is creating internet coffee houses for performers where at least the audio of their performances could be broadcast in a similar fashion to a pod cast but in real time and at high bit rate. It comes down to the fact that the coffee house type performance venue that once helped musicians to hone their craft desperately need to be revived. Af

Xbox requires Xbox games, BFD. If you don't like it, don't get an account, don't use it.

I've been on Steam since, well, before Steam existed. Back when TFC was distributed by Sierra. They have the least amount of DRM, often none, and the least restrictive policies of anyone. They have successfully bridged the needs of the user and the wants of the publisher. It isn't perfect, but it is less offensive than any other DRM method, and they have a lot of free stuff. And frankly, I don't mind a company maki

Some people like to buy used games, but I'll admit Steam sales reduce this need.

Some people are stuck on 5-10 GB/mo capped cellular or satellite Internet. That's not even enough to transfer a single dual-layer DVD (8 GB) along with the rest of the month's web browsing, and more and more AAA games have started to come on multiple DVDs.

Similar thing with used games, steam always has the full catalog available at any time

How long will that continue? I've heard of games on other stores getting taken down because the license had ended, such as Yoshi's Cookie on Nintendo's Virtual Console [joystiq.com]. What reliable source states that Steam is any different?

As for bandwidth and availability, Steam could offer a paid service where they would burn backups of the games in your account and send it to you through mail.

That would help for slow or capped Internet connections but wouldn't help people who go without Internet entirely for several weeks, long enough for Steam to expire your offline mode ticket.

"Often none"? How many games work without being signed into Steam? (Hint: that's DRM.)

Among the services that prevent resale and force you to be online to play*, Steam is the least bad of them. Far preferable is something like the Xbox 360, where you don't need to be online or have an account to play, and can let your friends play too.

*Yes, I know Steam nominally has an offline mode. It's been sufficiently unreliable for me that Steam requires online as far as I'm concerned.

But it's just that, an opinion. I have the opposite opinion. I love steam as a system and have no problem with a steam account. I honestly can't imagine going to a brick and mortar store and buying a game on DVD, actually nowadays I don't even have a DVD player in my machine. I use an external USB drive when I need to. I have no opinion on the account itself, that's just an account.

As for Microsoft employees, they are just people. Some are excellent coders, some a

Engineers from Valve and NVIDIA have spent a lot of time collaborating on a common goal for SteamOS: to deliver an open-platform gaming experience with superior performance and uncompromising visuals directly on the big screen.

NVIDIA engineers embedded at Valve collaborated on improving driver performance for OpenGL; optimizing performance on NVIDIA GPUs; and helping to port Valve’s award-winning content library to SteamOS; and tuning SteamOS to lower latency, or lag, between the controller and onscreen action.

The collaboration makes sense as both companies strongly believe in the importance of open-platform innovation, and both companies are committed to providing gamers with a cutting-edge visual experience.

Valve will deliver a great, open-platform gaming experience, and NVIDIA will continue to be the best choice for gaming on any open platform or operating system, including SteamOS.

the proliferation of distros is just stupid - people don't seem to understand what "distro" means, or why they should be offering addons to an existing distro, rather than pretending that they are building a new OS.

the ONLY value a distro offers is in establishing a particular set of versions, with a modicum of consistency of config and hopefully some testing. none of them offer anything significant that is also distinctive - just slightly different versions of the same packages maintained by others and used by all the other distros. yes, apt vs rpm, so what? they're functionally equivalent.

the real point is really a matter of software engineering: forking a distro is bad, since it increases the friction experienced by source-code changes. streamOS (sic) people may be dilligent and honestly propagate their changes upstream, but fundamentally, they should really just be running an apt repo containing their trivially modded packages. sure, that may mean a different kernel, big whoopie (very little of user-space is sensitive to anything but huge kernel changes.)

but yeah: it wouldn't be very sexy to say "I've got a repo of 37 tweaked packages I call a brand new whizzy *OS*".

1) X isn't really stable anymore. Doing compositing on top of X has historically required ad-hoc solutions like Xgl and AIGLX in order to get around X's legacy display model. Wayland solves this problem by integrating directly with EGL.

2) X isn't really used by app devs anymore. They use toolkits like Gtk and Qt, which do all their rendering client side. Since this is Wayland's native display model, performance using these toolkits should increase with Wayland.

I'm glad to see SteamOS has picked up PREEMPT_RT. I hope they stick with it. The PREEMPT_RT developers recently reported that they lacked the man-power to continue development (https://lwn.net/Articles/572740/). Maybe Valve can contribute money or man-power?

Also, since NVIDIA is keen to support SteamOS, this means that NVIDIA must officially support PREEMPT_RT. NVIDIA's driver support for PREEMPT_RT has always been spotty. At best, hacks to the driver's GPL layer were required to make it work. I hope those days are over. NVIDIA has really improved their Linux driver over th years in order to better serve the Android and HPC markets. PREEMPT_RT support should make it even better (PREEMPT_RT can often uncover pre-existing bugs).

The runtime is the most interesting part to me. They are effectively replacing the LSB with a "binary LSB" that you can distribute with your game.

By ensuring any application compiled against the Steam Runtime will work on SteamOS, they are providing a solid baseline for developers. From now on, developers will know they can relay on Steam Runtime.

Next thing may be we start to see other applications (not games) to use the Steam Runtime and provide it on non-SteamOS distributions.

Forking/Fragmenting is good when it solves a problem. Not when the differences are between using different conventions.

So... "A Linux-based gaming console" is a problem best solved by stock Ubuntu/Debian, rather than fine-tuning aspects of the OS to handle gaming demands that a desktop or server machine doesn't have? What are you getting at? Of course you fork something if you have a new use case.

Seriously, the iThingamajig audience has already taught me to hear "fragmentation" in the same tone of voice and significance as a Fox News pundit saying "destroying America" (voice: "whiny, desperate, and entitled"; significance: "zero"). You're not helping.

Valve offers SteamOS for use in a specific case - when you use a dedicated box for SteamOS. If that is not your case then you can simply install Steam through your package manager, or by hand if not available. Last time I checked Gabe didn't put a sharp knife on anyone's throat to force them to switch from Gentoo to SteamOS.

This has not begun to explain why you need anything more than a stock distribution

It's to make the lives of set-top PC manufacturers easier. Instead of selling a naked PC and requiring end users to install an operating system, which will not work for the demographic that most often games on a TV, they can just ship SteamOS.

Actually they are trying to pull people over to the "PC" from being console only by making an OS that mimics closely the experience of a console for PC games. So it is in their best interest to make it outwardly as easy to use and setup as possible, while still giving power users access to what's under the hood.

No, we *are* talking about console users here. The target demo for the Steam Box is a gamer who wants to play PC games in their living room, and so will be able to just buy the box and plug it in. The current release doesn't try to achieve that because it's not there yet, hence why they're suggesting that it won't be of much interest to anyone but Linux enthusiasts at this point.

SteamOS beta is not meant to be configured and played with by normal, console using, end users. Funnily enough, because what Steam want to be played with by normal, console using, end users is not here yet. The beta OS is a beta OS.

It's not that difficult to understand, is it? This is the beta of the operating system that steam boxes will ultimately run. You can install it on something else now, if you choose to. Getting it to run now is not representative of Steamboxen (hah!), and the experience they

Well, you could read the article. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not run aufs, use system V init, or run much of anything in realtime. The code itself is the explanation for why they are doing it that way, at this point, and let's be clear: you're not a game developer and this is not for you.

Since it's clear you are vastly ignorant, I am compelled to explain that there is a step in between when the source code is made available, and when packages are available in the distribution of your choice. Cur

You've basically revealed yourself as a moron who doesn't know what he's talking about but thinks he knows better than everyone else anyways.

SteamOS is an OS designed not just for gaming, but for a specific subset of gaming - using a controller and television instead of a mouse, keyboard, and monitor. The UI needs to be significantly different. You know how everyone bitches whenever an OS tries to reinvent the UI so that it works on both tablets and computers? This could have been the same situation, but Valve was smart enough to realize "hey, nobody wants to use a 10-foot UI on a 23" monitor, and nobody wants to type with a controller when they have a keyboard. Instead of pissing off our existing users *and* alienating the new target audience by making a compromise that fails at both, let's have two completely separate modes".

That's what SteamOS is designed for - a difference user interaction method. Or to be more precise, that's what Big Picture Mode (the Steam mode that SteamOS boots to) is. Big Picture Mode can be enabled as the default on any Steam install (Windows, OS X or Linux), and it's relatively simple to get Steam to launch by default as well.

However, SteamOS includes more than just a few default UI settings. There's the incredibly simple installation script - it offers very little customization, but it requires almost zero knowledge outside "getting your computer to boot off media instead of primary disk". That's essential for this particular niche, but would you want Debian dumbed down like that?

Or the stripping of unneeded crap. As I read TFA, I learned they built a rather customized compositor focused on game performance. Doesn't work too well in windowed mode, but it works well for fullscreen with UI overlays. Does that sound like something Debian ought to use?

Same for their kernel tweaks (some realtime scheduling stuff and disabling things that caused bugs with games), or their stripped-down install, or the dozens of other changes people are still trying to find.

But here's the thing - they are making almost all of this available as patches. It's open-source, except for Steam itself and the improved proprietary drivers. If Debian sees a use for these changes, they can merge it in. But to counter your inevitable repetition of "just make it a patch shit-gargler", you need to look at Valve's logic.

They saw Windows 8, and they were afraid. They realized that as long as PC gaming was reliant on one company (Microsoft) for an essential component, and that company has not just apathy towards PC gaming, but an outright reason to try to kill it in favor of their higher-profit-margin console, no matter how well Valve did at making games or keeping Steam running, their business could be destroyed. And with the Metro stuff and the locked-down app store, they saw a direct death threat. Shortly afterward, they started pushing their Mac port harder, and started work on the Linux port.

Given that history, would you really expect them to make themselves reliant on someone else for their console? Their thinking is basically "if we control our own OS, even if every other OS maker turns hostile to our market segment we can still keep it running". They have no problem with people running Steam on Windows or Ubuntu or Debian or fucking Slackware for all they care - but they want to make sure that there's at least one OS that will *always* be there to play games on. Hell, they even recommend Ubuntu+Steam for the old desktop experience, not SteamOS. Nobody is going to be rebooting into SteamOS - they'll be running it as the only OS on the machine because it's the only one that's usable on that machine's setup.

But everything I just said was kind of pointless, because you don't understand the very issue you're bitching about. Fragmentation on Android is a problem because programs that use new features do not work on old versions. Fragmentation of window systems or other APIs is bad because you have to write a new version for each system. And desktop Linux dislikes f

You said it much better than I could ever have hoped to. I've been a big Windows guy since 3.1 (maybe partially because for a while I didn't know any better) but lately Windows 8 has made me realize that Windows 7 will probably be the last version I will have installed on any of my systems voluntarily. I have a Win8 laptop (preinstalled) that I now have dual boot with Ubuntu 13.10 and I have considered more than once wiping Win8 off and making it a completely Ubuntu laptop. Seeing SteamOS has made me an even bigger believer in what Valve is doing for PC gaming because as far as I can tell, Microsoft is the worst enemy to the PC as a gaming platform and that's only going to get worse.

Perhaps this is partially to help push the XB1 forward as a "better choice" than the PC for gaming. Perhaps it's just ineptitude on Microsoft's part. Probably it's a bit of both. But either way, I think as my children get older and I start teaching my kids how to code and how to work with computers at a deeper level than launching netflix and playing plants vs. zombies that it'll be primarily with some sort of *nix based system (not Mac OS X though, they've just become overpriced PC's with specialized software). As a matter of fact, my goal is by the time my kids are over 10 they'll know how to write basic C programs and use make along with gcc, and they'll feel as comfortable using terminal as they will using a GUI.

I could care less what Slashdot likes to hear, and I've spent a good chunk of my life using Windows OS's so I don't say any of this easily, but I'm becoming more and more disenfranchised by the direction in which Microsoft is taking their platform. It feels very much like they are trying to put their own spin on iOS in Windows 8 and that's not a good thing. The whole idea of the IBM-compatible PC (I think a lot of people forget that what is considered the modern PC was a knock off of what IBM was trying to

I don't think Microsoft wants to kill PC gaming at all. But I think Windows 8 makes it clear Microsoft wants to move PC gaming towards using the Microsoft App Store as the preferred distribution platform. i.e. they want to replace Steam with the Microsoft App Store, so they get the money Valve is currently collecting.

I think it's a fine plan, and it makes sense for Microsoft to do it. But in turn, it makes sense for the owners of Steam and any other similar product (lesser players like Desura, for exa

As far as Steam is concerned, "Linux" games are "Linux" games, and run on Ubuntu, SteamOS or any other platform that runs the "Steam runtime", a basic compatibility layer so games can assume the existence of certain things.

So 'Linux' games will require the Steam runtime now? That sounds good for Steam, not so much for Linux gaming to become reliant on a DRM game store that takes 30% of all game revenue. Atleast hopefully the runtime is FOSS, say it is so.

Speaking of........
FOR THE LOVE OF [insert deity], do NOT buy your significant other a Sybian. I don't care if you are hung like a mule and fuck like a pornstar on a kilo of meth, you absolutely CAN NOT compete with the power of the Sybian. Hit up xhamster sometime and watch some of those videos. Some of those ladies are having a damned seizure, fall off of the things like a drunken cat on the back of a couch, forget how to speak English and break out into some kind of demon language, and some even appear to end up with some kind of amnesia and are cross-eyed. If you were barely ranking in the "mediocre" category, this will ruin your sex life forever because it'll really put just how bad you actually are right in a big ol WW2 air raid spotlight. Some of us just can't cope with that reality....is it dusty in here? *sob*

Oh, yeah. Fragmentation has clearly been blocking Android's success since 2008 [cnet.com], before the first phone was introduced. If it weren't for this fatal flaw Android might have been popular by now.

You got my OP wrong. I was pointing out about needless fragmentation of things that are just conventions. Having the buttons in any one config would be better than different configs even if it weren't optimal, consistency is important. Is any one of those configs better than the others? How easy it is to fix? Hope you can see how this is different from Windows fragmentation of XP vs. 7.

The end users don't have to pay for an upgrade and in many cases avoid costs of new hardware as well. That's how they're benefiting, with extra money in their pocket. How were Android users served by different layouts of buttons on each device? You seem overly sensitive to criticism of Android while ignoring my overall point. Windows may have its own useless "fragmentation", for example jerking around network settings during XP to Vista. This isn't Team A vs. Team B. It's about a case of NIH syndrome and la

Indeed. The patches will go back to Debian. The custom kernel is something Debian works very well with and without changes. I have been doing that for over 10 years. Currently running wheezy with 3.10.22 and a custom patch for an issue fixed later in 3.10.23.

Umm... no, no it wasn't. Valve hired the guys behind Narbacular Drop, who then worked at Valve to create Portal using many of the same concepts, but Portal was developed entirely by people who earned their paychecks working for Valve at the time they were working on the game.

uefi is not "restrictive". In fact, it provides quite a bit of additional functionality that never existed in BIOS. The only thing that has come from it that has been "restrictive" is a permissive feature called SecureBoot, also known as allowing for code signing to take place. Valve does not have code signing turned on in SteamOS, so that doesn't even impact you at all.

Or are you saying restrictive in the sense that it only shipped by default on x86-64 computers for the past 4 years?

I guess you would agree Phoronix is qualified to install the first beta of a Linux based OS? How about they being unable [phoronix.com] to boot anything but Windows 8 (.1) on hardware with UEFI after lot of trying?

Don't underestimate the people who are stupid enough to think that installing a beta version of a linux distro on their machines is easy when they probably can't even troubleshoot minor issues like printer connectivity in their Windows install...

All companies with offices in Puget Sound have seen employees going round-robin for years now (which is convenient, because it helps drive salaries high). To remind, Valve itself was founded by a guy from Microsoft, and that was ago.